Payen was a professional artist from the south of the then Netherlands (now Belgium) who toured for more than a decade in the Netherlands Indies (1817—1829)- His oil paintings and gouaches were made for a great deal in and around Bogor and also in Manado (Northeast Celebes). His main subjects were vegetation and landscapes, silhouettes of solitary, or groups of, trees, and a few more detailed paintings of individual plant species. His work is particularly beautiful and artistic. The State Museum of Ethnography at Leyden possesses several hundreds of paintings in three portfolios. A scanning learned that these paintings are not of any particular value for Malesian botany. Most of the plants depicted are common and mostly cultivated species: Gardenia (katjapiring), Opuntia, Pandanus, Cocos, Musa (pisang), Carica, Antiaris toxicaria, Parkia speciosa (petéh), Plumeria, Bauhinia, Zingiber, Alocasia, etc. The paintings are catalogued and provided by Payen with some notes in French, and often vernacular names.